Munich: Temple of Honour on Königsplatz, 1938

About the Work

Paul Ludwig Troost’s ‘Temple of Honour’, built in 1935 on Munich’s Königsplatz, resembles an antique edifice in this photograph. Providing a backdrop for a consecration bowl, the sunlit columns look as though they are made of precious marble. During the Third Reich, an annual ceremony commemorating the victims of Hitler’s 1923 Beer Hall Putsch was held here with great pomp. The architecture, much like the photo, served to idealise the site. Suggestive architectural views of this kind were what made the photographer, painter and film-maker Walter Hege so valuable to the National Socialists’ pictorial propaganda.